A sessions court that rejected the pre-arrest bail application of a BJP leader’s wife booked for trying to get an Indian passport on fake documents while being a Bangladeshi, has said in its detailed order, that her birth certificate was prima facie a forged one.
Getting into the details of the birth certificate Reshma Khan submitted in support of her passport application, it said that it mentions that it was issued by Registrar, Birth and Death, Badhurai, West Bengal. Court said a probe found on enquiry with the said authority that no such entries of birth were available on their record. The concerned authorities had also informed, it noted, that the serial number and registrar number as mentioned in the birth certificate, also did not exist in their record and that such a birth certificate was not issued by it.
Additional Sessions Judge Deepak L. Bhagwat further reasoned that the place of birth is mentioned in her birth certificate as Badhurai, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, but that in her anticipatory bail application before it, she had mentioned her birth place as Islampur, Nalanda, Bihar. “It is apparent that the birth certificate as used by the applicant while applying for passport was not genuine and it was a forged one,” the court said.
Judge Bhagwat also pointed out discrepancies in the identity cards of her mother and father, that the father did not have the surname Khan, but Hasan. Similarly, her mother’s husband’s name was not Khairati Khan, who she claimed was her father, but the husband’s name was shown to be Gulam Rasul. In her own identity card, it said, her name is mentioned as ‘Gudiya Khatun’ and not Reshma Khairati Khan, it pointed out. Khan had claimed that her nickname ‘Gudiya’ appeared in the document. The court said it was ‘difficult to believe’ that while stating the name for the identity card being issued by the election commission, a nickname would be used.
It said certainly her custodial interrogation was required in the facts and circumstances of the case to probe how the birth certificate was forged, where and who else was involved in it.
A retired police inspector had lodged the complaint against Khan and also named two senior police officers - Additional Director General of Police Deven Bharti and Assistant Commissioner of Police Deepak Phatangare for hindering registration of offence against her in 2017.
